Holcim Critical Controls

When the head of health and safety at Holcim, a global leader in building materials and solutions, needed to adapt the company's critical controls into visual tools that could be easily understood by its 75,000-strong workforce, he knew who to ask. Holcim had previously worked with visual health and safety specialists Jincom to improve its safety communication — work that contributed to a significant reduction in on-site fatalities.

Rafael Menendez, Holcim's Head of HSE Operational Excellence, commissioned Jincom to simplify its critical controls and transform them into visual safety posters to roll out across teams at 2,300 sites in around 80 countries worldwide.

The Critical Controls campaign followed a bowtie risk analysis by Holcim which identified eight high-risk event areas. From these — Structural Collapse, Fall from Height, Hot Metal Contact, Fuel Fire, Material Engulfment, Mobile Equipment, Contact with Moving Machinery and Coal Mill Explosion — Jincom's creative team developed 32 highly technical posters focused on visual elements with minimal words for greater impact. For each topic, Jincom designed three to five individual posters plus a combined poster covering the critical control areas.

Structural Collapse

In this example of a combined control poster, five key control areas associated with Structural Collapse are simplified and illustrated with minimal words:

• Quality Control and Assurance (QC/QA)
• Safe Operating Limits
• Preventive Maintenance and Inspection
• Structural Protection
• Exclusion Zones

Fall from Height

For the high-risk event topic 'Fall from Height', the four critical control areas identified were:

• Certified Work Access Equipment
• Personal Fall Protection System
• Pre-Job Plan
• Barriers, Railings and Covered Openings

Amazing feedback

The safety posters received very positive feedback from the workforce. “The result has been extremely professional and had amazing feedback from all company workers,” said Rafael Menendez. Teams on site shared their satisfaction too: “I went through the program materials and really I was impressed with them. Very professional and available from day one.” (Khaled Farrag, Cement Plant Manager, Holcim.)

A winning team: a significant fall in fatalities

The Critical Controls posters were the latest success in an ongoing relationship between Holcim and Jincom. Jincom's earlier contribution to Holcim's health and safety strategy helped improve communication to workers and contributed to a significant decrease in on-site fatalities. According to the company's 2018 annual report, adoption of the 'Ambition Zero' strategy resulted in an 82% reduction in on-site fatalities in 2018 compared with 2017.

A huge part of the challenge was simply reaching the worker — getting a safety message from executive level to the field without it being distorted along the way. This is where Jincom's expertise in transforming complex, technical information into simple illustrated tools came in: simple, basic, easy to translate, with no language barrier. Green is good, red is bad — you can't get more basic than that.